Former Cuban President Raúl Castro is confronting additional charges in Florida pertaining to the 1996 downing of civilian aircraft piloted by Miami-based exiles, following the U.S. government's indictment of the former leader earlier this year.

On Monday, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier accused Castro, 95, of directing spies to infiltrate the exile group Brothers to the Rescue and of ordering the attack on their planes.

The state charge of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder rests largely on a federal indictment announced in May that included charges of murder and destruction of an airplane.

It remains uncertain whether Castro will ever set foot in a U.S. courtroom.

Uthmeier stated that the arrest warrant will circumscribe Castro's ability to depart the island nation and preclude his travel to any jurisdiction maintaining an extradition agreement with the United States.

“I am not oblivious to the fact that Raúl Castro is an elderly man who is presumably disinclined to march himself into Miami,” Uthmeier said.

“I suspect others would reach him before the court of law would, but at the end of the day, we stand ready to prosecute the case.”

According to the state complaint, Castro was the Minister of the Revolutionary Armed Forces and First Vice President of Cuba at the time he granted final authorization to shoot down the planes.

Cuban Directorate of Intelligence agents operating as part of the Wasp Network in the Miami area and the Florida Keys infiltrated Brothers to the Rescue and reported flight plans, the investigator said.

On Feb. 24, 1996, three unarmed Cessna aircraft departed Opa-Locka Airport in Miami-Dade County.

Well beyond Cuba's territorial waters, Cuban MiGs destroyed two of the civilian planes with air-to-air missiles, killing the four occupants, the complaint said.

Both aircraft were proceeding away from Cuba and received no warning notwithstanding contact with Havana air traffic control, U.S. officials said.

Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel characterized the federal indictment handed down earlier this year as a political stunt whose sole purpose was to “justify the folly of a military aggression against Cuba.”

He accused the United States of lying and of manipulating the events surrounding the shootdown.

“Our historic federal indictment laid the groundwork, and James and his team have now taken the important step of bringing charges under Florida law,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Jason Reding Quiñones said at a news conference.

Castro assumed the presidency from his ailing elder brother Fidel Castro in 2006, subsequently ceding power to a trusted loyalist, Díaz-Canel, in 2018.

Although he stepped down in 2021 as head of the Cuban Communist Party, he is widely held to exercise power behind the scenes—a perception underscored by the prominence of his grandson, Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump has persistently threatened military action against Cuba ever since U.S. forces captured former Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the Cuban government’s longstanding patron.

Having ousted the Venezuelan leader earlier this year, the White House imposed a blockade that throttled fuel shipments to Cuba, precipitating severe blackouts, food shortages and an economic collapse across the island.